Equipment report

Alpine Waste & Recycling completes MRF upgrade

In response to market demand in the Denver area, Alpine Waste & Recycling, Commerce City, Colorado, says it has more than doubled its ability to process single-stream recyclables, making the company the highest-capacity recycling processor in a contiguous 10-state region.

Alpine Waste & Recycling retooled its Altogether Recycling plant at 645 West 53rd Place in Denver. The $5 million investment added all new equipment from Machinex, Plessisville, Quebec, with twice as many transfer belts, as well as some sorting technology that was almost unimaginable when the plant first opened in 2007, Alpine says.

The new plant will be able to handle 30 tons of material per hour at capacity, Alpine says.

Machinex says it designed the system to increase processing capacity while adding flexibility to respond to market changes.

The equipment upgrades include two new, larger balers; split paper screens; a triple-deck cardboard screen; an improved eddy current and vacuum separation system to recover aluminum; and a new cross-belt magnet to recover steel cans.

Chris Hawn, Machinex North American sales manager, says, “Although Machinex has a proven track record with new turnkey installations, we recognize the need to improve upon existing operations and increase efficiency.”

US Shredder and Castings Group to increase casting capacity

Miramar Beach, Florida-based U.S. Shredder and Castings Group has announced that, together with its main castings supplier, it is investing to increase its castings capacity to the automobile and scrap shredder market. The company says it also will offer new types of hammers as a result of the investment.

The investment should increase the company’s capacity by as much as 30 percent.

“The decrease in presence in the market of several traditional suppliers of castings has given us the largest market share we have enjoyed in the last nine years,” U.S. Shredder President Bill Tigner says. “We felt an investment now together with our main casting supplier will have us poised to present lower lead times as well as higher quality for our customers when the market turns around.”

Tigner adds, “The increase in capacity also includes the new offering of ‘differentially heat-treated’ hammers as well as a special alloy hammer we have developed.”

U.S. Shredder and Castings Group offers scrap shredders, control systems, downstream systems, nonferrous recovery technology and air systems, as well as shredder castings, service, engineering, construction and installation, to the scrap industry.

Wendt Corp. installs ragger wire chipping line for Santarosa Group

Wendt Corp., Buffalo, New York, and strategic business partner MTB of France have designed, manufactured and installed a ragger wire chopping line at Niagara Falls, New York-based Santarosa Group, a family-owned and operated industrial waste and recycling company.

In business since 1951, Santarosa Group comprises a number of companies that have experience in many industries, including tire recycling, hazardous and radioactive waste management, biomass procurement and processing, transfer stations and environmental cleanup. Today, the company’s primary focus is on managing industrial waste streams, reprocessing them into valuable commodities, and managing hazardous materials throughout the country.

Santarosa Group invested in the chopping line to process ragger wire, also referred to as ragger tail and pulper rope, which results from the paper/pulping process when trash is cleaned from the pulper vat. Ragger wire consists of plastic trimmings, steel baling wire, staples, foil, insoluble papers and other impurities found in recovered fiber.

“We needed a heavy-duty chopping line to size and separate materials,” says Aaron Santarosa, president of Santarosa Group. He adds that the company is processing feedstock that contains “various materials that can destroy a typical shredder, and the MTB shredder was able to withstand those materials without ruining the machine in addition to providing the specialized materials for our end users.”

Santarosa Group’s chopping line features an MTB BDR 2400 shredder, MTB TMR 600 ferrous extractor and belt conveyors. The MTB shredder cuts the tough-to-process ragger wire into 2-inch long pieces, while the TMR 600 extracts the ferrous metals. The company also recently purchased an eddy current separator to recover nonferrous metals from the ragger wire. Along with the ferrous and nonferrous metals recovered, this process provides a finished paper/plastic product that the company can sell as a fuel source, Wendt says.

Santarosa Group also is shredding aluminum products, plastic and paper rejects, plastics, ferrous wire, coiled ferrous wire, tires, wood and MRF (material recovery facility)residue, among other materials, with its new equipment.

Wendt Corp. is the exclusive distributer for MTB equipment, parts and service in North America.

Rigaku releases the Katana hand-held analyzer

Rigaku Analytical Devices, Wilmington, Massachusetts, a supplier of hand-held and portable spectroscopic analyzers, has launched Katana, a hand-held laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) analyzer. According to Rigaku, Katana enables durable and accurate alloy identification for use in scrap metal sorting, quality assurance in metal fabrication and positive material identification in petrochemical operations.

The company says Katana was engineered to address the analysis and usability gaps that similar hand-held metal analyzers do not meet, providing an alternative for more accurate identification of a larger number of alloys.

Designed for on-the-spot identification of the most difficult alloys, including aluminum grades, Katana offers results with its QuickID software in less than two seconds, Rigaku says.

Integrating proprietary laser ablation and detection engine (BLADE™) technology means Katana is considerably smaller and lighter than many other hand-held LIBS and XRF (X-ray fluorescence) analyzers currently available on the market, according to the company. With an extended battery life, Katana is more robust and less susceptible to fatigue and downtime. Furthermore, the GPS and macrocamera allow for instrument and sample tracking, Rigaku says.

David Mercuro, general manager and vice president of the elemental business at Rigaku, says, “The ability to accurately classify metals is of paramount importance to various metal applications to ensure profitability and product quality. We developed Katana to directly address the needs of the metal analyst, regardless of location or environment.”

He continues, “We identified the weaknesses in existing technologies as well as the unmet needs of the end user and utilized the information to design and manufacture a device which performs efficiently and reliably.”

Rigaku has considerable experience developing benchtop analysis equipment for the identification of metals and alloys.

BPS introduces concept feeder line

Brunswick, Ohio-based Best Process Solutions (BPS) now offers a concept feeder line (CFL). According to BPS, this vibratory feeder “solves many of the inherent design flaws in vibratory equipment and can incorporate the advanced Inertial Isolation System (IIS), which eliminates the transfer of the vibratory energy to support structures and buildings.”

The units are powered by twin rotating motor vibrators designed to give linear conveyance action.

The CFL system, which BPS says is ideal for all vibratory feeder applications, including under-mill, magnet, eddy current and finder-feeder applications, can be viewed in operation at www.bpsvibes.com/videos.

Available in mild steel and stainless steel construction, additional CFL options include dust-tight covers, pan liners and stainless steel noses.

BPS manufactures custom engineered, bulk processing equipment and systems.

SciAps introduces LIBZ portable metals analyzer

SciAps, Woburn, Massachusetts, has introduced the LIBZ portable metals analyzer, which features laser induced breakdown spectroscopy.

The company claims the laser technology used by the LIBZ provides faster and more precise analysis of stainless steel and high-temp alloys than X-ray technology.

Because the LIBZ portable analyzer does not rely on X-ray technology, there are “no registrations, no licensing, no government reporting or fees [and] no ionizing radiation,” the company says.

The LIBZ analyzer features a high-powered, eye-safe laser, SciAps says, and does not require the use of silicon detectors.

The Android-based unit also features an integrated camera that can shoot still photos and video.